Chapter 14 #2
She shrugged. “The Academy was always my mother’s dream.
Not mine. She’s always seen healing as a calling, not just a way to make money.
I don’t have her gift for it. I know how to stitch up a wound and tend a fever just like I know how to trap squirrels and chop wood, but there’s all the other things she does that come naturally to her, like holding the hands of the dying as they pass or comforting the mothers of stillborn babes or praying for a fever to break when you’ve done everything you know to do…
” All of the grief and helplessness and weight of holding a life in your hands.
She shook her head. “I’m not good at any of that.
I wouldn’t want to do it for the rest of my life. ”
The witch hunter regarded her with that strange look again, like he didn’t know what to make of her.
“Why let your mother train you if you have no interest in becoming a healer?”
She thought about not answering. She could snarl at him some more. But maybe he was right. They were stuck with each other for the time being. In the cursed woods with night pressing in around them. Maybe it was better that she try to get along. Just for now. Just a little.
“My mother’s health has never been the same since the branding. She takes care of everyone else. She needs someone to take care of her too. Who would I bring her to if she got sick? The healer in Sulen won’t even talk to her because of the brand.”
She still remembered those awful days after Jarn when her mother had taken a fever and she hadn’t known how to fix it. So she’d learned how to fix it. She never wanted to feel that helpless again.
Pity softened the witch hunter’s expression, and she had to look away before she punched him.
“Getting you into the Academy was part of the bargain we made,” he said. “You guide me through the woods. I help your mother find a new home. You go to the Academy.”
“I guide you to the fort and you pay me two hundred cord. Four if I find your men. That’s the deal I made.”
His frown deepened. “Four hundred cord is enough to buy a horse, not a future. Not even a very good horse.”
She was silent as she drank her tea, not bothering to argue with him. Four hundred cord would change her life even if it didn’t mean much to him.
“It will be enough.”
He thought that over while he stared at the fire.
When he had it figured out, he said, “I know a priest who teaches at the Academy hospital. He might be able to find a place for your mother there. Trained or not, she’s a talented healer and she’s young enough to work if she wants to.
If she still wishes to train at the Academy, I can make it happen. ”
She gave him a skeptical look. What kind of influence would it take to get a branded witch into the Academy?
And a blind woman at that? More than a witch hunter was likely to have, even a captain.
It would take money too. Her mother would have to pay for lodgings as well as cough up the required donation to the crown for the training.
She didn’t believe the witch hunter could get her mother into the Academy, but she was out here in the middle of the cursed woods with him alone in the dark.
She wasn’t stupid enough to call him a liar to his face.
“She would like that,” Rowan said simply, because it was the truth.
If there was some way that her mother could get into the Academy and discuss herb craft and poultices all day with people who didn’t fear her brand and her blindness, she would be happy as a cat in cream.
It wasn’t going to happen, but it was a nice dream.
Who would have thought the witch hunter would be as ridiculous a dreamer as her mother?
“And then what?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“If your mother enters the Academy, what will you do? Would you stay with her in the capital?”
“I can’t imagine living in a big city. I’ve never even been to one.”
The capital seemed like an imaginary place full of nobles and palaces and endless activity. If she couldn’t walk through a town like Sulen without feeling hopelessly out of place, how would she survive somewhere like the capital?
“What kind of work are you drawn to?”
“The kind that pays.”
He huffed a laugh like he thought she was joking. “What are you good at?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but then snapped it closed.
He would laugh at her if she gave him an honest answer.
A man like him wouldn’t think staying out of trouble was an actual skill, but it was.
So was taking care of her mother and selling eggs and scavenging abandoned houses and hunting the woods and helping Tilly find the wild herbs she needed for her potions.
And she couldn’t talk about her other abilities.
“What about your future?” he pressed. “You must have dreamed of doing more than taking care of your mother for the rest of your life.”
That was rich coming from him. He was the reason her mother needed help. “There’s nothing wrong with taking care of the people you love.”
“I didn’t say that there was,” he said. “But you deserve your own life too. She wants that for you, clearly. She was the one who bargained for your entrance into the Academy. You should tell her you don’t want it.”
Like it was that simple. Her mother would be crushed. There were days…years…where the idea of getting Rowan into the Academy was the only thing that kept her going. How could she take that away from her?
“We used to argue about it all the time. When we were in Jarn, she saved up every extra coin so she could send me to the capital when I came of age. She stopped talking about it after the trial. I thought she’d let it go.”
“You should—”
“I don’t need your advice on how to handle my mother, Captain.”
He pulled back, a wince at the corners of his eyes. “I suppose not.”
They went back to staring at the fire, both of them thinking their own thoughts, the silence not so companionable anymore. Shadows swirled at the edges of the circle of light cast by the fire, dancing with every spark and flicker.
“You don’t have to call me Captain,” he said. “I’m not that to you. Casrian is fine. My friends call me Cas.”
“We’re not friends.”
“We’re not enemies. I want to help you,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “You should let me do it.”
“I’ll figure it out on my own.”
He looked down at his hands where they curved around his cup. He had long fingers, graceful despite the calluses and the scars. Elegant hands. Strong wrists. Who noticed a person’s wrists?